


Supermarket Flowers

by kategkateg



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Death, Ed Sheeran - Freeform, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Letter, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Sad, Sad!Dan, Songfic, goodbye letter, sick!Phil, supermarket flowers, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 18:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13552716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kategkateg/pseuds/kategkateg
Summary: And as I said, I don’t want to say goodbye to you. You’re not going to get away this easy, so I’m saying see you later.See you later, BearLove, Phil xx





	Supermarket Flowers

“And then it spilt all over her hands, they were green for a week. Imagine greeting people with that,” Phil smiled, finishing the story about a woman who couldn’t open a bottle of paint.

He was lying in bed, duvet up to the middle of his chest. Despite warm July weather, he was always cold, their portative heater constantly on, making Dan sweat. Phil’s lips were chapped due to dehydration, sunshine hitting the skin on his cheekbone and travelling a bit further, enough for his eyes to catch the ray and light up with aquamarine. He was so pale that Dan almost expected him to start sparkle every time sun would visit the room, just like snow or vampire. Dan wouldn’t mind if Phil was a vampire. They live a little longer.

His mind went back to the evening when they were sitting at the cinema, watching the last Twilight movie. He remembered Phil’s loud gasp at the end of it and how hard it was not to chuckle out loud in the complete silence of the theatre because it was so precious. Now it felt heartbreakingly distant: a little story that he read when he was thirteen, an old dream, for some reason still present in his mind, a fragment of his previous life - anything but not an old memory from when their future was so uncertain that it was a good thing.

“It’s not working, is it?”

Dan looked at Phil, annoyed at himself for spacing out. The image was still in front of his eyes and his heart sunk a tiny bit more. Phil looked almost nothing like that Phil that appeared in his thoughts. Now he was… breakable? Dan couldn’t call him fragile because spiritually he was nothing like that, so he settled with breakable, allowing himself to be cheesy. Phil’s skin looked thinner; the tender red of his veins and capillaries became more visible. His dark circles were worse than Dan’s, even at his lowest times, and he hated the way they were bringing out the blue of his eyes. He is going to miss these eyes like crazy.

“No,” Dan shook his head, gaze drifting away from Phil’s face only to land it on his hands. “Sorry.”

Phil lifted his hand enough to reach Dan’s and intertwined their fingers. Dan looked up to see him with a sad curve on his lips that still was lifting the corners of his mouth upwards. Dan wondered how could he bring himself to smile if it felt like a faint squeeze of Dan’s hand would be enough to break his fingers. _Breakable, not fragile._

“Remember the first time you held my hand?” Phil asked, fondness bursting out of his being, making the lump in Dan’s throat grow bigger. It was burning, so he just nodded in response. “I was super clumsy and tripped over my own foot but you caught my hand and didn’t let me fall,” He continued, his cold thumb drawing circles on the back of Dan’s hand.

“And then I never let go,” Dan whispered, the tightness of his vocal cords making even these barely audible sounds come out painfully.

“You didn’t,” Phil smiled at him, applying a little bit more pressure to his grip.

Dan slid down from the bed, now standing on his knees – the closest he could get to Phil. Lying on his sides was too painful for Phil, so every night Dan was sitting right beside him, catching every single glimpse of his sight while he still could. He didn’t realize that he was crying until Phil reached his other hand and brushed his cheeks, Dan suddenly becoming aware of hot liquid uncontrollably streaming down his face.

“It’s not fair,” he cried, his face buried in Phil’s chest and making his hoodie wet. It made Phil jump and Dan was ready to slap himself in the face for being too miserable. “It’s not fair,” His voice getting lost in his quiet sobs.

“I know,” Phil said, tangling his free hand in Dan’s locks. “I know,” he murmured gently, leaving a kiss on Dan’s forehead.

They stayed like this for a couple of minutes that felt like hours – Dan letting himself lose it all and Phil holding him close, trying to collect everything back together.

“Dan?” He called, his voice not louder than a sound that you hear when you turn over the page of an old diary that has been worn out by time and your hands. Dan looked up, grateful for his vision not being blurry. “I love you.”

Dan looked him in the eyes, hoping that Phil could sense everything he had to say, everything he wanted to say and everything that was impossible to turn into words. “I love you too,” He breathed out, connecting their lips and feeling his chest being ripped open with the realization that there wouldn’t be an infinity of moments like this for the two of them – the future that they both have always hoped for.

“Could you make me a cup of tea?” Phil spoke, his fingers tracing down Dan’s jawline.

“Sure,” Dan attempted to smile in response before getting up and leaving the room.

It felt unnatural to be somewhere else except for that corner of their apartment where they were spending every single minute together for the last two weeks after Phil asked to be transferred home. Dan cooked twice since they came back here – in those days when Phil was feeling bearable enough to sit down at the table, ordering some takeaway every other day. For some reason, Phil grew to like black tea with passionfruit, so Dan was pouring it into Phil’s favourite mug before returning back to him.

When he stepped into the room, it didn’t feel right. It was all too quiet, even for a place where no one was making any noise for too many days. Dan felt his breath become more frequent, anxiety growing like a giant monster getting ready to come out and crash everything on its way. He looked at Phil’s face and in a dreadful silence of the room he heard the last string inside of him snap. It took everything to put the mug on a dresser before it became too much for him to hold even himself.

He walked closer to the bed and for a split second, looking into Phil’s open eyes, it seemed like he was just thinking about something. However, moments passed and he didn’t take a single breath.

Dan reached out his trembling hand and put two of his fingers on Phil’s eyelids, sliding them close. He walked around the bed and laid down, wrapped himself around Phil’s body and let his tears come out until he hadn’t any left.

 

Dan looked in the mirror and put a peony in a buttonhole of his suit. It was white, just like his suit – not so appropriate for the occasion but he knew Phil would like it. He remembered how they were sitting on the sofa, watching someone getting married on the TV when Phil casually said “I want you to be in white when we will get married. You look good in white.” He looked at Phil for a moment, searching for any signs of a joke, but there was none. “Okay,” He smiled then, feeling a small red patch appear on his cheek. He felt like it was decades ago. He looked at himself, making sure that there was no toothpaste on his face, and left the bathroom of the local church.

When he was walking down the aisle, he saw that everyone has already taken their seat. He walked to the first row, feeling pairs of eyes on himself. He sat down next to Phil’s parents who got there without him because he was in charge of his piano being delivered. He wanted to play for Phil.

“Oh, sweetie,” Kathryn turned to him, eyeing his presence, and then throwing herself into his arms, not being able to hold her tears at the sight of him in white. Dan wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back in an attempt to calm her down.

The ceremony went quick and it was painfully ordinary. Dan smirked at the thought of Phil looking at it disapprovingly because how could anything about him be ordinary? And he would be right – it couldn’t. Dan found himself picturing Phil often, and, even though he didn’t believe in the afterlife, he hoped that it was real, at least for Phil.

Eventually, the priest asked for his word, so he stood up and, completely ignoring the podium, walked over to his piano. He wasn’t going to say anything in front of all those people. There was no point because there was the only person who he wanted to talk to and, unfortunately, he wasn’t there anymore. He put his sleeves up and almost started playing when he heard Kath timidly ask one question.

“What are you going to play, dear?”

He smiled to himself, memories coming back and flooding his mind, faint aftertaste of happiness being brought up by them. “Interrupted by Fireworks,” He replied and hit the first key.

At some point, he started crying but it was okay because, after all, everyone was crying too. However, Dan was surprised by the lack of now usual sorrow lacing his emotions – it was filled with longing and something that he couldn’t name that has always been there whenever he thought of Phil, even before their first meeting.

He finished playing and closed the piano, standing up and walking towards the exit that was leading to the cemetery, following others. Phil’s parents waited for him to join them, so they all walked out together. The final words have been said and the soil has been put above the coffin. Dan would be lying if he said that he didn’t cry because he did, but not as hard as the last time he held Phil in his arms. It was like he too was dead, only his body for some reason still functioning on its own.

An hour passed by and he was about to go and help to put his piano back in the truck when Lesters approached him for the millionth time this day. It’s not like he was complaining.

“Call us tomorrow, okay?” Nigel asked, hugging him tightly before letting go and allowing Kath to do the same.

“Of course,” he whispered. He developed this odd habit – he wasn’t talking much but when he was it was barely audible. Maybe it had something to do with Phil. It definitely had, if he was being honest, he just didn’t know what exactly.

“Read it when you come home,” Kathryn said and put something in his hand before walking away with her husband. Dan looked at his hand and felt like he got punched in his stomach, being left out with an inability to breathe.

 _“Dan,”_ The parcel said, his name written in familiar handwriting.

When he got home, he undressed and took a shower, trying to wait as long as possible before reading everything Phil had to say. It was completely irrational but he couldn’t do anything with himself. It was like a final line – once he reads it there will be no coming back, his world would turn into a world where everything about Phil would be left in past and it was the last thing he wanted. It was nearly midnight when he decided to open the letter, lying on his side of their bed.

 

_“Dan,_

_Hi. I’m greeting you because I don’t want to say goodbye and I know that neither do you. I just realized that we’ve never written each other a single actual letter, so… It’s our last first together._

_It’s such a weird thing to do – to write you a letter when we literally spend every single moment with each other. I guess we don’t anymore._

_I don’t know what you were expecting to be the first thing in this letter but I bet it wasn’t me saying ‘thank you’. Thank you, Dan. I was pretty blind but I wasn’t blind enough to not notice how you were struggling to keep yourself together just for me and I honestly have no idea how did you manage to do that. If not for you being so strong, I wouldn’t know how to cope with everything myself. And I want to ask you to stay like that. Just for me, if you can’t do that for yourself._

_I have so much to tell you but it hurts to write, so sorry for not showering you in a kilometres long piece of paper._

_Dan, I wish you could see the world as I did. And I’m not talking about different countries or opinions on things serious and not quite. You know, my world contained you as well and it would be a lie if I said that you weren’t the biggest part of it, if not the only one. You have no idea how beautiful you are. You can’t even imagine the way your eyes would sparkle whenever I did something funny. Just the presence of you, just the thought of you, just a memory was enough for me to keep my battle going until the very last day. I would feel ready to give up but then I would think of you and think that I could do that for a little bit longer._

_Oh my God, I am so in love with you. I wanted to buy a forever home together, I wanted to adopt a dog, I wanted to have kids, I wanted to grow old with you. I wanted to see you in white suit smiling at me like you saw me for the first time and I hope that you were clever enough to wear it today. I was head over heels for you, you were my end game and I would never wish for it to change. I know that I’m talking in past tense: I was, I would, and it’s because I’m not. Not anymore. But I want you to remember one thing: I love you. With all my heart, soul and body, even if I’m not with you, I love you more than anyone has ever loved anything. Let me be self-centred and say that I love you more because it has always felt so overwhelming I was ready to blow up. Just know that I still am._

_I know that you are probably mad at July right now for being so colourful. I want you to think that every bright object contains a part of me, even black, so this way you can feel less alone._

_I also know that you probably still don’t believe in afterlife or reincarnation or any of these things but if it’s true I’ll always be with you. I’ll stand by you as a spirit, watching your every step and protecting you from the world when I can’t be centimetres away. I’ll meet you in heaven and I’ll find you after we both become something different. It’s the promise that I’m going to keep forever._

_And as I said, I don’t want to say goodbye to you. You’re not going to get away this easy, so I’m saying see you later._

_See you later, Bear_

_Love, Phil xx”_


End file.
